Internet leak

The term Leak (English, leak, hole, leak ) generally refers to the unofficial release of information that was not provided for this purpose. This can be internal documents of the company, secret contracts, confidential negotiation papers or the like. In particular, the term for publishing preliminary versions (usually alpha or beta) versions of computer games or other software used, which are often released without consent of the developer on the internet. Leaks can be erratic and faulty due to the incompleteness. Also in the music publishing on the internet are often available before they officially appear on the market.

Papers

Software

Data theft by third parties

Leaked computer games are mostly based on the snooping of data and are illegally available before the actual release.

A well-known example of a leak is the computer game Half-Life 2 by Valve Software. The hacker " ANON " (from anonymous) in 2003 procured illicitly access to the corporate network of the developer and copied the source code of the build -4, he also published. Other well-known leaks are, for example Doom 3 Alpha version 0.02, which id Software on the E ³ 2002 showed ( which was here the CD on which the presented version was stored stolen ), or various stalker builds ( 1098, 1114, 1154, 2215 ). Especially many leaks there were in Windows Vista or Longhorn. It was as good as all the builds published as " private leak". In the years 2003 and 2004, a leaked alpha version of World of Warcraft on the Internet appeared. Beginning of 2011 was put online a leaked beta version of the game Crysis 2.

Anonymous make available through a developer

However, there are also the cases that one of the developers even at the end of the official support period of a computer game the source of the anonymous fan base makes available to allow these private support, and thus to prevent the game is abandonware. Reasons why the "shortcut " of the " leakens " is chosen instead of an official release is that frequently the resolve of the rights situation is too complicated and time-consuming, since the rights is often distributed among many parties. For example, to Dark Reign 2, 2011, the source code from a previous developer Pandemic Studios was released, another example is be available of the Falcon 4.0 source code.

As part of the self - organized support by the user community then unofficial patches or ports created with the help of the source code to other platforms.

Music

Also in the music publishing on the internet are often available before they officially appear on the market. For this reason, some musicians and record labels have begun to send any more pre-releases to journalists. Instead, auditions are possible in the context of events, where the then pending for publication recording is played to the audience.